Another woman has come forward with allegations of rape by both a fellow KBR employee and a US soldier while working for KBR in Iraq. According to The Nation, the 42-year-old paramedic reported the assault, but was told by KBR employees to keep quiet. Her computer was even confiscated as “evidence” when she emailed a lawyer for advice.

Five years after the United States invasion of Iraq, the US has still not created laws to protect Americans working under American contractors in foreign countries. The lack of legal protection makes it difficult for women to defend themselves through the legal system, leaving them in a kind of “legal limbo,” according to the New York Times. To date, no one has been prosecuted for sexually assaulting a US civilian in Iraq.

Avitourism (birding’s ecotourism) is proving be one of BirdLife South Africa’s most powerful conservation tools. Tourism has outperformed all other sectors in South Africa’s economy, with two popular ‘Birding Routes’ generating an estimated US$6.4 million annually for local people. As a result, BirdLife South Africa has announced the development of six new Birding Routes in the Western Cape and Cape Town areas.

More than 140 guides have been trained to date, creating a new generation of conservationists in some of the country’s poorest areas. The benefits speak for themselves, with many guides now speaking of the value of birds – both economically and ecologically. “I am taking bird guiding as my career path. Not only has my family benefited from bird guiding, but the whole of Nyoni village now thinks twice about birds. I am fully involved with the community conservation programme”, said Shusisio Magagula (Amatikulu). …

The new routes will afford tourists guided-access to over 600 bird species, of which 28 are endemic to the Western Cape, such as Cape Siskin Serinus totta, Orange-breasted Sunbird Nectarinia violacea and Cape Sugarbird Promerops cafer. A two-week trip could be expected to yield in excess of 350 species.

IVAW members seize National Archives Building in front of hundreds of surprised museum visitors. Response from visitors including teachers, students, vacationers was highly positive though there were a few horrified faces in the crowd.

“I would have rather not heard from General Petraeus at all,” said Geoff Millard, who served with the Army’s 42nd Infantry in Tikrit in 2004 and 2005. “I think we are at capacity of hearing from politicians, pundits and generals.”

Millard, who joined the Army in Buffalo, New York and is now with the Iraq Veterans Against the War, said that it was time that the voices of the enlisted men and women who have participated in the Iraq war and occupation were heard.

“I want to start hearing from E-5s and E-4s; I want to start hearing from boots-on-the-ground soldiers about their experiences,” he said. “I think that every experience in Iraq, no matter what the political views of that veteran, the stories themselves inherently expose this war. Take a story of a guy grabbing his buddy out of a burning Humvee, and that’s a story that tells you what this war is really about. These experiences have been completely left out of the debate.”

The former soldier said that if he had been asked to testify he would have spoken about experiences that opened his own eyes to the real character of the war.

“I would talk about hearing generals, up to and including Gen. George Casey, use the [racially insulting] word ‘haji’ to talk about the Iraqis. I would talk about upper-echelon officers and their racist attitudes towards the people of Iraq, to whom we are supposed to be bringing ‘freedom.’”

Millard said that while he believes the war remains today as bad as it was when he was there three and a half years ago, the mood of the soldiers themselves has undergone a change.

“Most soldiers when I was there were against the war, but they couldn’t admit it,” he said. “And now, it’s like, after doing two or three tours, those who still support the war are in the minority.”

Millard said that he and other veterans hope to soon have the opportunity to give their own testimony on Capitol Hill, reprising the “Winter Soldier” hearings that they themselves organized recently in Maryland in which soldiers and Marines returned from Iraq spoke of their experiences and the brutality of the war against the Iraqi people.